Exclusive: U.N. Elects Iran to Commission on Women's Rights
The United Nations Economic and Social Council has elected Iran to serve a four-year term — beginning in 2011 — on the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). The U.N. calls the Commission “the principal global policy-making body” on women’s rights and claims it is “dedicated exclusively to gender equality and advancement of women”. Yet Iran was elected by acclamation. It was one of only two candidates for two slots allocated to the Asian regional bloc – in other words, a fixed slate and a done deal. This, to a theocratic state in which stoning is enshrined in law and lashings are required for women judged immodest.
Women in Iran lack the ability to choose their husbands, have no independent right to education after marriage, no right to divorce, no right to child custody, have no protection from violent treatment in public spaces, are restricted by quotas for women’s admission at universities, and are arrested, beaten, and imprisoned for peacefully seeking change of such laws.
“In the past year, it has arrested and jailed mothers of peaceful civil rights protesters,” wrote three prominent democracy and human rights activists in an op-ed published online by Foreign Policy Magazine. “It has charged women who were seeking equality in the social sphere — as wives, daughters and mothers — with threatening national security, subjecting many to hours of harrowing interrogation. Its prison guards have beaten, tortured, sexually assaulted and raped female and male civil rights protesters.”
The 2009 U.S. State Department report on Iran outlines other highlights of Iran’s women’s rights credentials. For instance, “spousal rape is not illegal” and when it comes to any other kind of rape “most rape victims did not report the crime to authorities because they feared…punishment for having been raped…Four male witnesses or three men and two women are required for conviction. A woman or man found making a false accusation of rape is subject to 80 lashes.” Other features of Iran’s legal system, according to the State Department, include: “a man may escape punishment for killing a wife caught in the act of adultery if he is certain she was a consenting partner….[I]n 2008, 50 honor killings were reported during a seven-month period…” In general, “the testimony of two women is equal to that of one man.” Moreover, “a woman has the right to divorce only if her husband signs a contract granting that right, cannot provide for his family, or is a drug addict, insane, or impotent. A husband was not required to cite a reason for divorcing his wife.”
Iran’s elevation to the commission comes as a black eye just days after the U.S. helped lead a successful effort to keep Iran off the Human Rights Council, which is already dominated by nations that are judged by human rights advocates as chronic violators of essential freedoms.
I usually try to refrain from re-blogging myself from SeaofGreen, but you will have to bear with me; this is completely tragic and I am burning with anger.
so i guess the un agrees that women who show their hair cause earthquakes. the un sucks.
